NOTE
For permission to collect these papers my thanks are due to theEditors of the following publications:
The Standard, English Illustrated Magazine,Longman's Magazine, St. James's Gazette,Chambers's Journal, Manchester Guardian, Good Words,and Pall Mall Gazette.
R.J.
St. Guido ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and downthe lane till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of thebunches of grass and so pulled himself up. There was a footpath onthe top which went straight in between fir-trees, and as he ranalong they stood on each side of him like green walls. They werevery near together, and even at the top the space between them wasso narrow that the sky seemed to come down, and the clouds to besailing but just over them, as if they would catch and tear in thefir-trees. The path was so little used that it had grown green, andas he ran he knocked dead branches out of his way. Just as he wasgetting tired of running he reached the end of the path, and cameout into a wheat-field. The wheat did not grow very closely, andthe spaces were filled with azure corn-flowers. St. Guido thoughthe was safe away now, so he stopped to look.
Those thoughts and feelings which are not sharply defined buthave a haze of distance and beauty about them are always thedearest. His name was not really Guido, but those who loved him hadcalled him so in order to try and express their hearts about him.For they thought if a great painter could be a little boy, then hewould be something like this one. They were not very learned in thehistory of painters: they had heard of Raphael, but Raphael was tooelevated, too much of the sky, and of Titian, but Titian was fondof feminine loveliness, and in the end somebody said Guido was adreamy name, as if it belonged to one who was full of faith. Thosegolden curls shaking about his head as he ran and filling the airwith radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or circlet ofglory. So they called him St. Guido, and a very, very wild saint hewas.
St. Guido stopped in the cornfield, and looked all round. Therewere the fir-trees behind him—a thick wall ofgreen—hedges on the right and the left, an